But in time the divine fury
infected even the royal damsels in their quiet chamber; they were
seized with a fierce longing to partake of human flesh, and cast
lots among themselves which should give up her child to furnish a
cannibal feast. The lot fell on Leucippe, and she surrendered her
son Hippasus, who was torn limb from limb by the three. From these
misguided women sprang the Oleae and the Psoloeis, of whom the men
were said to be so called because they wore sad-coloured raiment in
token of their mourning and grief.
Now this practice of taking human victims from a family of royal
descent at Orchomenus is all the more significant because Athamas
himself is said to have reigned in the land of Orchomenus even
before the time of Minyas, and because over against the city there
rises Mount Laphystius, on which, as at Alus in Thessaly, there was
a sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus, where, according to tradition,
Athamas purposed to sacrifice his two children Phrixus and Helle. On
the whole, comparing the traditions about Athamas with the custom
that obtained with regard to his descendants in historical times, we
may fairly infer that in Thessaly and probably in Boeotia there
reigned of old a dynasty of which the kings were liable to be
sacrificed for the good of the country to the god called Laphystian
Zeus, but that they contrived to shift the fatal responsibility to
their offspring, of whom the eldest son was regularly destined to
the altar.
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